Young leader fights cancer: 6-year-old girl shows every penny counts

Jenna Bowers, 6, of Medora is an honorary ambassador for the third annual Hope - Medora Goes Pink Breast Cancer Event and Community Day taking place Oct. 13 in Medora. The event was started by Debi Wayman, pictured behind Bowers, in honor of her mother who died in 2004 of breast cancer. Bowers has raised money for Medora Goes Pink the past two years and plans to do so again this year.

MEDORA

For being such a little girl, Jenna Bowers of Medora has a great big heart.

At the age of 4, she decided to make and sell cookies and lemonade to raise money for cancer patients.

“I heard there were kids in a hospital that were sick and had lost their hair,” she said. “I just wanted to help.”

That first year, 2010, she

collected $27 and presented it to Debi Wayman, president of the Hope-Medora Goes Pink Breast Cancer Event and Community Day in October.

“I was so impressed that this small child would be thinking of someone else in this way,” Wayman said.

The next year, Bowers took a different route. She asked friends and family for donations and increased her contribution to Medora Goes Pink to $55.43.

Wayman said it didn’t matter that the amounts were small because every little bit helps. The money collected each year from the event goes to benefit local cancer patients, she said.

In two years, Medora Goes Pink has collected and distributed more than $5,000 in the form of gas and grocery gift cards to cancer patients in Jackson, Lawrence, Jennings and Monroe counties. Proceeds from the event also have been donated to the Don and Dana Myers Cancer Center in Seymour to help pay for mammograms.

“You don’t have to be the CEO of some company or some big time celebrity to make a difference. What matters is what you can do for others, and Jenna, along with all of Medora, is doing a lot,” Wayman said.

This story appears in the print edition of The Tribune. Subscribers can read the entire story online by signing in here or in our e-Edition by clicking here.